It is common practice, particularly in the automotive repair business, to provide cleaning or painting tanks in which the object, such as an automotive radiator, is placed within the tank and the cleaning liquid is collected within the tank and conventionally is allowed to go into the sewer system. Because of the large quantity of contaminates in such wastewater restrictions are being imposed to prevent the dumping of such contaminated and hazardous sludge into the sewer system.
There have been provided systems for cleaning stations for wastewater and recycling of the cleaning fluid in connection with the cleaning and repair of automotive parts. The Powell U.S. Pat. No. 2,222,516 and Williams U.S. Pat. No. 3,094,131 disclose vehicle cooling system cleaning methods and apparatus for treating the wastewater from such cleaning methods including a recycling step. The Fisher U.S. Pat. No. 2,677,381 and Korbet U.S. Pat. No. 4,453,556 also disclose spray cleaning apparatuses which involve stations with filtering and recycling of cleaning fluids. Prior art patents which disclose systems for cleaning specific automotive parts and involve recirculating of the cleaning solvent are Arrigo U.S. Pat No. 3,584,633, Neill U.S. Pat. No. 3,526,237, Lawter U.S. Pat. No. 3,379,018, Cockrell U.S. Pat. No. 2,660,744 and Lough U.S. Pat. No. 766,365. Other patents which disclose apparatus and methods for cleaning or washing systems involving recycling of the cleaning fluid are Williams U.S. Pat. No. 3,295,538, Binnig U.S. Pat. No. 4,512,811, Duval U.S. Pat. No. 4,406,796, Zall U.S. Pat. No. 4,061,504 and Gilmore U.S. Pat. No. 3,413,149. None of the above noted cleaning and recycling systems provide all of the advantages of the present invention.